a name is like iron bars
by ncfan
Summary: Three generations with one thing in common. /Spoilers./


I was just noticing this when I was thinking about Umineko, so I thought I'd explore a little bit. There are, of course, spoilers. I own nothing.

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**I.**

"_Thank you for not calling me 'daughter of the Castiglioni.'"_

When she is very little, Beatrice Castiglioni is proud of her family and who she is, proud of her name. She has no reason not to be. How can she not be proud of her family? In Italy, the Castiglioni family is wealthy and influential; everyone in the nation knows the name 'Castiglioni.' Beatrice is not a mean-spirited little girl, but she can be boastful. She is proud of her family name.

As she gets older, things start to get different.

The name 'Castiglioni' is a symbol. It is a symbol of wealth and power and pride. Possessing the name 'Castiglioni' guarantees that all others will subject themselves to her. With her family name, Beatrice can go anywhere in Italy and be sure of safety and security.

The name 'Castiglioni' is a symbol. It is a symbol of rigid tradition and decorum, of dresses with constricting bodices that make it difficult to breathe and hairstyles that leave her hair pinned so high back on her head that her scalp aches from the pain of taut hair, and her head hurts from so much disproportionate weight. It is a symbol of women who must sit quietly and smile prettily even when the words they hear displease them. It is a symbol of a woman who must never speak her mind for as long as she lives, must never assert her will for as long as she lives.

The name 'Castiglioni' is a symbol, and bearing it, Beatrice becomes a symbol too. She knows how so many see her. A daughter of an ancient and most prestigious family, just as arrogant and strident as all the others, with not an independent thought in her head, a living doll created solely for the purpose of bringing greater prestige to her family. She is not a person separate from her family. She is merely an extension of the Castiglioni family, much the way her left arm is an extension of the rest of her body. Speaking to her is the same as speaking to any other member of the family. What could she possibly have to say that's different?

Beatrice rebels as she can. She has some of the maidservants close to her in age, whom she's friendly with call her 'Bice' in secret. She cultivates low-class friends in the city, knowing that it will irk her parents. She sits in smoke-filled dingy parlors, letting that acrid scent cling to her hair and her skin. They talk about things she could never say at home, politics and war and love affairs. She has love affairs of her own in those dingy parlors and dingier bedrooms, just a thin wall separating her and him from the outside world, so thin that they can hear the honking of the horns of motorcars in the streets. So many that, in retrospect, it's probably nothing short of a miracle that she never got with child. Probably even more of a miracle that her parents never found out about these affairs, that in their eyes, to the end, she was their precious virgin daughter.

She is the free-wheeling prodigal, the shame of her family, trying to fill up the emptiness inside of her. All of these people, these low-class friends and lovers, they call her Bice, but she is still the daughter of the Castiglioni to them. She suspects that this was a large part of the appeal she had for many of the men she slept with, something exotic about sleeping with a noblewoman.

Finally, she comes to a distant land, where she has lost everything and the roulette has turned back to zero, and she comes across someone who does not see her as the daughter of the Castiglioni.

She looks into Kinzo's eyes, and sees herself reflected there, alone.

**II.**

"_I will no longer be Beatrice."_

She has always been here. Beatrice has always existed in this place, surrounded by beautiful flowers and a beautiful mansion and loving servants. And there is Kinzo, he who comes to visit her, and speak with her, and is always kind and attentive to her. Beatrice thinks of him as a father, though he has never allowed him to call her that.

That's just it. She has always been here.

Her name is Beatrice. That is supposedly the name of a great and powerful Witch. Everyone tells her that she is Beatrice, and that she and this Witch are one in the same. If everyone tells her that, then does it become the truth?

But Beatrice can not do magic. She can not make candy appear from teacups nor make rainy days turn blue and cloudless. The man she respects as a father, he… he… He hurt her. She has no other words for what he did to her than to say that he hurt her, and that though he has always shown nothing but contrition for it, she still feels terror at the thought of him, still wakes at night with her skin crawling and her heart throbbing, trying to beat out of her chest.

The thin wails of what she's told is her child echo through the grounds. But this child does not have her love. Beatrice can not understand how she even came to have a child in the first place, and when she looks down at that sleeping face, she feels no love, no tenderness, no attachment. It's just some thing that grew inside of her like a parasite. Beatrice once got a boil on her arm when she was little, throbbing, swollen, infected, and the child growing inside of her was like that. An infection that was making her belly swell out of control, until she was sure it would pop the way the boil did. Cleansing herself of the infection had nearly ripped her in two.

All this happened because she is Beatrice.

But she can not do magic. She can not even leave this place. She can not even change herself into a spirit and leave this place. So how can she be the great Witch.

There comes one day a girl. She is Kinzo's daughter, but she is a child, with no trace of the terrible dignity he possesses. Her hair is long and brown, her eyes just as brown and deeply bewildered. She is covered in dirt and leaves and twigs, but there is a high flush of color in her cheeks, and she walks through Beatrice's garden as though she is some fanciful creature from a dream. Rosa is more real than anything Beatrice has seen, without artifice or pretense.

And when Beatrice asks to be let out, Rosa takes her hand and agrees. Outside of the fence, Beatrice will shed her name, and truly fly. She will find out what the world is like, why she is here, for what purpose she was put on this earth. She will decide for herself, just who she is.

**III.**

"_Don't call me Yasu! I hate being called that!_"

The other Fukuin servants, they have no respect for her, so they don't listen to that request. And why should they? Yasuda Sayo… is truly pitiable, beneath contempt. She is small and feeble compared to these robust, hearty girls, and she is so clumsy and forgetful that she makes everyone else look bad. Why should they listen when she tells them that she hates being called by the name they have chosen for her? Why should she resist?

Sayo, no, Yasu, learns that names are both a pair of wings and a set of shackles binding a person to the earth. There are some that enable her to soar, and some that keep her bound to one place like a life-sized doll. There are some names that aren't even what humans would call 'names', but describe perfectly the nature of a subhuman being who can't love other people without bring calamity down on their heads.

Yasu learns it all. She soaks it up like a sponge, for she has always had a hunger for knowledge. Anything to distract herself from the empty, meaningless monotony of her life. In that time, she also learns some very specific names.

The Witch Beatrice is great and powerful. She rules Rokkenjima's night, and to reduce the anti-magic toxin bit by bit, she plays pranks. She grants favors to those who respect her and lashes out against those who don't. A servant is knocked down a flight of stairs and is so seriously injured that she refuses to stay any longer; it's all Krauss and Natsuhi can do to convince her not to sue.

Beatrice goes through many faces and outfits and hairstyles. Sometimes you'll find her in an elaborate black gown, adorned with the One-Winged Eagle. At others, you'll find her in a mint-colored dress and pinafore that rustles like whispers when she walks, a dress fit for an elusive phantom. At others, you'll find her dressed as a schoolgirl, ready to sit at an important financial conference. Her hair may be silvery-green, or it may be ginger-blonde. It may be worn loose, adorned with pearls in a neat, snug cap, or elaborately braided and tied back, with a cloth rose clipped on the side.

But that does not change the fact that Beatrice is tied to the island, through her very name. If she could bring herself to abandon it, she might be able to leave, but that will never happen. She is tied to the fate of this island. 'Beatrice the Witch of the Forest', 'Beatrice the Ushiromiya family alchemy counselor', 'Beatrice Kinzo's long-lost love and benefactor' can not leave. No matter how she rails, that name is a curse, tying her down, and the entire island becomes a closed room sealed with rain and thunder from which she can never escape.


End file.
